Review of Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

Burt Lancaster's seventh film (and sixth noir!) 'relocates' him to London where he is an ill-tempered Canadian seaman and former WWII P.O.W. who accidentally kills the bartender of a pub for curtailing his boozing at closing time; a fellow patron (played with customary hamminess by the one and only Robert Newton) witnesses the event and plagues Lancaster throughout the picture to act as 'inside man' in a pharmaceutical robbery. This turn of events comes about through Lancaster's improbable relationship with a besotted nurse (Joan Fontaine) in whose flat he first takes refuge. Despite an evocative title, appropriately moody camera-work and musical accompaniment (courtesy of Russell Metty and Miklos Rozsa) and even a couple of Wellesian directorial touches (read tilted camera angles) thrown in for good measure by Norman Foster – whose best-known credit remains JOURNEY INTO FEAR (1943) – the film faces an insurmountable hurdle in the unconvincing central romance that culminates in an exceedingly phony redemptive ending. More's the pity, therefore, that this finale had just been preceded by the film's best sequences which depict Newton's double-death at the separate hands of first Fontaine and later Lancaster!